What Destroyed the USS MAINE - An opinion

By Edward P. McMorrow

The explosion which destroyed the battleship
USS
MAINE in the harbor of Havana, Cuba on the night of February
15, 1898 was a blast which would continue to echo around the Americas for
many years to come. In response to the destruction of the ship, Washington
sent American troops and warships to intervene in the Cuban revolt against
Spanish colonial rule, and to attack other parts of the Spanish colonial
empire, including the Philippines. This attack on Spanish possessions was
the first American war against a foreign power since the Mexican-American
War of 1845-48. It marked a major change in American foreign policy
away from isolationsim and toward a more active role in international affairs,
a trend which has continued through the twentieth century. The American
victory over Spain, a great power since the time of Columbus which
had once dominated much of the world, marked the entrance of the
United States into thearena of world powers. As a result,
Washington assumed a greater role in the Americas, well beyond the immediate
borders of the United States. Americans now had interests in the
entire Western Hemisphere, and were no longer occupied with the westward
expansion across North America.

The war also marked the beginning of American international involvement
beyond the Americas. The achievement of new, world power status
brought increased respect from the other European world powers to the United
States, and gave the United States a much larger role in the international
affairs of the new century. For example, the United States would intervene
in the First World War, becoming directly involved in a conflict
between the European great powers for the first time.
Due to the impact of this one event, in both the short and long term, it
is appropriate to attempt to determine the cause and responsibility for
the blast which destroyed the ship, on its one hundredth anniversary.
Based on any conclusions reached in response to this question, we can also
decide if the United States had a valid reason for going to war with Spain
in 1898.

The Arrival of the USS MAINE in Havana Harbor

This entire process of the United States assuming the roleof a new
great power began with the arrival of the battleship MAINE
in
Havana harbor as a result of a problem which had begun the year before.
Having lived under Spanish colonial rule for four hundred years, the people
of Cuba had launched the latest in a series of rebellions, with American
sympathy and support, beginning in the late 1860's. In 1897,
the senior American diplomat in Havana, Consul General
Fitzhugh Lee, was becoming concerned for the safety of Americans in
Cuba during the insurrection. There was a fair number of them, both
businessmen interested in the sugar trade and rebel sympathizers
working as mercenaries or smugglers of munitions and supplies.

Beginning in December 1897, the MAINE
was based at Key West, Florida in response to the Cuban situation, and
for six weeks held in readiness to go to Cuba if Lee
called for help. When no call for help had been received by the third
week in January 1898, the commander of the MAINE,
Captain
Charles D. Sigsbee, had been told to join the other ships of the Navy's
North Atlantic Squadron when it arrived there, and go with them to their
winter base at the tiny islands of Dry Tortugas at the tip of the Florida
Keys. The Squadron arrived at Key West on January 23, 1898,
en route to Dry Tortugas, but they brought with them orders for Sigsbee
from Washington, telling him to procede with the MAINE
to Havana on a "friendly" visit. While the intention of this
visit may have been no more than sending the MAINE
on the completion of her mission to protect Americans in Cuba, it may also
have been an attempt to influence Spanishpolicy in the rebellious
colony, an early example of American battleship diplomacy.
Another reason for the presence of the American warship was to enforce
the Monroe Doctrine and ensure that another European power such as Germany
did not attempt to take advantage of the instability on the island during
rebellionto seize Cuba.

The USS MAINE in Havana Harbor

Whatever
the motive, every attempt was made to make the visit appear friendly.
The ship arrived in Havana harbor on January 25, 1898. Then,
after sitting in Havana harbor for three weeks, the MAINE
was torn apart by one or two explosions at 9:40 PM on the night of February
15, 1898, two days before the ship had been scheduled to leave Havana
and return to New Orleans to show the flag at the upcoming Mardi
Gras. Out of acrew of 374, approximately 260 Americans were
killed.

What Sank the Ship ? An External Explosion ?

Ever since this catastrophe, there has been a mystery about
what sank the ship. At first, it seemed that the ship
had been attacked, either by gunfire or a mine in the harbor. Once
it was determined that it had been a magazine explosion which actually
destroyed the ship, the question remained of what caused the magazine
to explode. There were two basic categories for all answers to this
question. The explosion could have been triggered by a blast outside
the ship, or by a blast or accident inside the ship.

One possible cause for an external blast was a mine. It could
have been a part of the harbor defenses which had broken loose from its
mooring and accidentally drifted into the ship. It could also have been
deliberately placed where it would explode under the ship's keel.
This second explanation of the intentional use of a mine was favored, based
on the extent of theanti-Spanish feeling in the United States at that time,
and on the coverage of the event by the "yellow press".
Many people felt that when the MAINE arrived in
Havana harbor, she had been directed by the Spanish authorities to a mooring
where a mine had been planted for use against her.

Another possible cause of an external explosion was sabotage.
A saboteur could have placed a homemade bomb on the hull of the ship or
he could have left a homemade mine floating in the water near the MAINE,
where she would strike it as she swung at her mooring. Because Cuba
was
in the midst of a violent revolution, this saboteur could have come from
one of the factions fighting for control of the island. There were
the Cuban rebels who were trying to gain their independence and could
have attempted anything which they felt would hurt Spanish colonial rule.
Fighting the rebels, in addition to the Spanish authorities, there were
right wing radicals who also favored continued Spanish rule and hated
the Americans for aiding the rebels and trying to influence Spanish policy.

An Internal Explosion ?

While most people have reached the conclusion that the MAINE
was sunk by the external explosion of a mine, there was also the possibility
that the explosion of the magazines was triggered by an internal fire or
explosion. Like all warships, the MAINE was
loaded with explosives and flammable materials, including the shells and
powder for her guns, the coal used to fuel her engines, and paint supplies.
As a result, the explosion could have been caused by an internal accident
or intentional internal sabotage. Immediately after the explosion,
this explanation was favored both by the Spanish authorities
in Havana, as the one for which they could not have been blamed,
by other foreign naval experts, and by some American observers. This disagreement
over the cause of the disaster was a primary reason for the extent of the
official and unofficial investigations into the disaster.

When the first investigation into the event was being conducted,
there was evidence against the external blast of a mine which seemed to
indicate that the explosion was internal. While most members of the MAINE's
crew and other witnesses reported having heard two explosions, some did
say that there was only one explosion. Before it had been determined
that the magazine had exploded, one explosion could have indicated that
all the damage had been caused by one large, powerful mine. Once
it had been proven that the magazine had exploded, a single explosion would
have indicated that the magazine explosion had not been triggered
by the external blast of a mine but rather by a fire on board the ship
or by an accident in the magazine itself.

The validity of these conclusions is based on the assumption that
the witnesses were able to distinguish the explosions. If the magazine
explosion was indeed sparked by the external detonation of a mine, the
two blasts could have occurred in such quick succession that some witnesses
thought that they saw or heard one long, drawn out explosion rather than
two distict blasts. One hundred years later, lacking the audio or
video evidence upon which we have come to rely in so many more recent cases,
there is no way to determine the nature of the explosion(s).

In addition, two circumstances had been missing which many observers
believed would have been noticed in the event of an external, underwater
explosion. One was a splash or geyser of water which none of the
witnesses reported having seen being thrown up beside the ship at the time
of the explosion. Many felt that this would have been indicative
of an external explosion of a mine. The other was dead fish, which
no one reported having found floating in Havana harbor on the morning after
the disaster. Assuming that there were fish living in the polluted
water of the harbor, it seemed that if there had been an explosion in the
water, quite a few fish would have been killed and then found the next
day.

Spontaneous Combustion

An internal explosion could have been caused by a fire on board
the ship. One possible source for such a fire was spontaneous combustion
of the coal in the bunkers, some of which were located next to the
magazines, separated only by a bulkhead. This was a frequent
problem on board coal-fired warships during the late nineteenth century.
When a ship like the MAINE was carrying soft, bituminous
coal, and the temperature in the bunker reached a high level, the coal
could spontaneously ignite. This could be particularly dangerous
in the bunkers near magazines. If there were a fire in such a bunker,
it could heat the magazine enough to ignite the powder and cause an explosion.
This explanation has been favored by those who believed that the blast
was internal, from the time of the disaster. More recently,
this was the theory which Admiral Hyman Rickover presented in his
book, How the Battleship MAINE Was Destroyed,
in 1976.

Spontaneous combustion in coal bunkers
was a problem which had affected several US Navy ships built since the
Civil War, apparently making this a reasonable explanation for an internal
fire which could have triggered the magazine explosion. However, unlike
the MAINE, none of these ships was known
to have been lost as a result of these fires. Two years earlier,
there had been spontaneous combustion on board the cruiser CINCINNATI while
she was based at Key West. The fire had started in a bunker next
to a magazine, heating the magazine to the point where the wooden boxes
containing shells burned, and the loaded shells became charred, but
they did not explode. It was soon noticed that a bulkhead had become
red hot, and thebunker and magazine were quickly flooded.
The CINCINNATI carried old-fashioned but chemically stable brown powder
which did not explode even when heated to this point. Although
the MAINE was armed mostly with the same
type of powder when she exploded in 1898, she was also carrying between
1500 lbs. and one ton of less stable black powder, used for saluting, in
the Reserve magazine. Apparently, the CINCINNATI was not carrying
any black powder at the time of her fire.

In addition, experience with the hazard of spontaneous combustion
had made the Navy aware of the problem, causing officers and crew to periodically
check coal bunkers. The MAINE and other Navy
ships also carried a thermostatically controlled fire alarm system in the
coal bunkers which was designed to trigger fire alarms if the temperature
in the coal bunkers reached a certain level, indicating that spontaneous
combustion had occurred. These alarms could have been disregarded,
however, because they had been known to have been triggered when temperatures
in the bunkers reached levels below that at which they were set.

In the months after the MAINE disaster, there
were at least two cases of spontaneous combustion on board other Navy ships,
the battleship OREGON and the armored cruiser
BROOKLYN.
In mid-March 1898, the OREGON had been ordered
to leave San Francisco and travel around Cape Horn to reinforce the US
Navy in Caribbean. Spontaneous combustion occurred one week later,
while she was steaming off the coast of Peru during this voyage.
Her crew noticed smoke and heat in the forward section of the ship, which
were traced to a coal bunker. A damage control team was then able
to dig into the bunker, expose the smoldering coal, and douse the fire.

There was a similar fire in a bunker next to a magazine on board
the BROOKLYN on May 16, 1898 while she was en
route from Charleston, South Carolina to Key West in the middle of the
night. The fire was detected by the thermometers in the bunkers,
which activated the alarm system, giving the crew enough time to remove
ammunition from the adjacent magazine and spew steam into the bunker to
extinguish the fire. Since the same alarm system had been fitted
on board the MAINE, it would seem that it would
have been effective if spontaneous combustion had occurred on board the
battleship in Havana harbor. In addition to these standard Navy procedures
which would have reduced the likelihood of a bunker fire, there were other
arguments against such an occurrence that night on the MAINE.
While there were coal bunkers next to the magazines which exploded, some
of these bunkers were not full on the night of the blast, and had
been recently cleaned and painted. Also, Commander Wainwright, executive
officer of the MAINE, had a reputation for
caution and thorough safety procedures. As a result, the crew members
had instructions to check the coal bunkers at regular intervals and to
feel the bulkheads of bunkers for any sign of unusual heat when in passageways
besidethem. However, there was one bunker, A-16, which was full ofcoal
and abutted the Reserve magazine. It could have been the site of
spontaneous combustion because ventilation, though good enough to allow
combustion to occur, was not sufficient to prevent heat from rising
to the point at which the coal could have begun to smolder.

Magazine Explosion

Another possible cause of the blast was the explosion of a magazine
beginning in the magazine itself. This was the cause of accidental
explosions which heavily damaged or destroyed nine other battleships around
the world between 1900 and the end of the Second World War. There
was one significant difference between these other, later explosions and
the explosion on board the Maine in Havana harbor. Most of the later
accidents involved ships carrying early smokeless powders which were chemically
unstable and prone to explode as a result of chemical deterioration.
The Maine, however, still carried the old fashioned brown and black powders
which, though smoky when used, were much more stable and safer on board
ship than the early smokeless powders. This made such a magazine
explosion less likely.

Other factors against the possibility of an internal magazine explosion
on board the MAINE were the strict safety procedures
ordered by the cautious
Captain Sigsbee.
Whenever the magazines were opened, lights were put out, cigarettes
extinguished, and the galley was sealed off. Sigsbee
had even gone so far as to devise an item which he had added to the regular
safety procedures. Anyone who went into the magazines had to wear
soft cloth "antistatic slippers" over their shoes, which were intended
to prevent the generation of static electricity sparks by regular shoe
soles scraping the deck.

Other Causes of an Internal Explosion

There were several other possible causes of an internal explosion.
One of these would have been a fire in the other flammable materials
carried on board, such as the large quantity of paint needed each time
the ship was painted, stored in the paint locker on board the ship.
There was also little chance of this, though, because no one could gain
access to this material without Sigsbee's knowledge,
the key to the paint locker having been kept in the cautious Captain's
cabin. The use of flammable paint in the recently painted coal
bunkers near bunker A-16 could also have been a cause for trouble.
If the combustibles which had entered the air as the paint
dried had entered A-16, this could have increased the likelihood of spontaneous
combustion there.

Another possible cause could have been internal sabotage, if a visitor
to the ship had managed to smuggle a bomb on board and leave it where it
would ignite a magazine, a coal bunker, or the paint locker. This
could have happened if the crew of the ship had not watched visitors closely
enough and had allowed them access to sensitive areas of the ship.
Commander Wainwright's strict safety procedures also meant that there
was little chance of internal sabotage on board the ship in Havana harbor.
Because the visit was a friendly one, the ship could not be kept sealed
off and visitors had to be allowed on board. Sigsbee
had ordered several tight security measures while in Havana, though.
One of these was that all visitors to the ship had to be kept under close
surveillance, greatly reducing the possibility that one of these
visitors could have left a bomb on board without being noticed. Thus, while
an internal explosion was possible, it seems unlikely given the arguments
against the possible causes for such an event.

The Sampson Board's Court of Inquiry

This question of what destroyed the Maine was addressed by the two
official inquiries conducted by the US Navy into the matter.
The first US Navy Court of Inquiry to investigate the MAINE
disaster, known as the Sampson Board and consisting of Captain William
T. Sampson and three other officers, arrived at Havana
on February 21, 1898. They listened to testimony from Captain
Sigsbee, the officers and crew of the Maine, and other witnesses of
the explosion. In addition, they also listened to the statements
of divers who had been sent down to examine the wreck of the MAINE.
These divers had a very difficult job, working around the jagged
wreckage in the dirty, dark, almost opaque waters of the harbor.

After the Sampson Board completed its investigation and inquiries
in 1898, it came to the conclusion that the MAINE
had been destroyed by the explosion of the forward and reserve magazines
of six-inch ammunition, both located in the forward part of the ship.
The divers had reported that the port side of the ship where the
forward reserve magazine for six-inch ammunition had been located was entirely
gone. Apparently that magazine of secondary battery ammunition was
a location of the explosion. Most of the testimony of the witnesses
and the observations of the divers seemed to indicate that the explosion
of these magazines had been triggered by an external blast. The majority
of the witnesses testified that there had been two explosions, as
would have been the case if the explosion of the magazines had been triggered
by the blast of a mine outside the ship. Lt.
John Blandin, officer of the deck at the time of the explosion, reported
that he heard an explosion coming from the port side, forward.
Another officer, Cadet Cluverius, was in his cabin writing a letter
when the explosion occurred. He recalled hearing a report like the firing
of a gun, followed by all the ship's lights going out, and then there was
an "indescribable roar, a terrific crash, intense darkness ..."

Other witnesses on board other ships in the harbor alsoobserved two
explosions. The American passenger steamer CITY OF WASHINGTON was moored
aft of the MAINE. After 9:30 PM, two
American tobacco dealers were sitting in deck chairs on her deck.
One of them had just joked that they were well protected with the guns
of the Maine commanding the city when he heard a sound like a cannon shot.
He looked up and saw the bow of the MAINE rise
up out of the water, apparently as a result of the force of the first blast
beneath the forward end of the ship. Then he saw a huge, fiery explosion
in the center of the ship, followed by thick black smoke and debris falling
everywhere as they ran for cover. At the same time, the captain
of their ship, Frank Stevens, heard a muffled blast which seemed to comefrom
underwater, followed by a second explosion. When he saw what had
happened, he ordered the ship's boats launched. Frederick Teasdale,
captain of the British bark DEVA, was below deck on board his ship,
berthed about one half mile south of the MAINE
at a wharf in Regla, across the harbor from Havana. He felt his ship stagger,
and he was afraid that she had been rammed by a steamer. This was
apparently caused by a shock wave from the first blast, under water.
He then ran on deck, in time to see the explosion of the Maine's magazines
hurling debris and smoke across the harbor.

While inspecting the wreckage on the day after the disaster, several
officers of the MAINE had noticed bottom plates,
identifiable by their green anti-fouling paint, thrust up out of the water.
Later, the divers had found the keel of the ship in an "inverted
V" shape thrust upward to within eighteen inches of the harbor surface,
more than thirty feet above its original position. They placed this
bent section of the keel at about frame eighteen, near the bow, and it
was interpreted as having been driven into the ship, and upwards, by a
powerful outside force, such as the explosion of a mine, beneath the keel.
Based on this evidence of an external explosion, the Sampson Board reached
the conclusion that the MAINE had been destroyed
by an external, submarine mine. If the mine had been a Spanish
naval mine, it assumed that the mine was large, with a charge of several
hundred pounds of high explosive guncotton which triggered the explosion
of the magazines. With deliberations completed by the third
week in March, their report was delivered to the Navy Department
in Washington on March 25, 1898.

The plating at frames 17, 18, and 19 protrude from
the water above and to the right of the small boat.

In addition, there were two pieces of information which the
Sampson Board did not accept as evidence. One was that otherdivers
had reported finding a hole in the ship's side with the edges bent
inward, which seemed to indicate an external blast. The second was
a hole in the harbor floor, filled with soft mud, opposite the hole in
the ship's side, which some observers interpreted as having been caused
by the same external blast. The Vreeland Board's Investigation

Twelve years later, in 1910, a second inquiry into the fate of the
MAINE was begun. At this time, many
Americans wanted the remains of the men which had been left on board the
Maine removed from the wreck and brought back to the United States for
burial. Others wanted a second, more thorough investigation of the
disaster. In addition, the Cubans wanted the wreck removed from Havana
harbor, where it was a hazard to shipping. In response,
Congress authorized the raising of the MAINE
and appropriated funds for the project.

The job was given to the US Army Corps of Engineers, which constructed
a water-tight elliptical cofferdam on the floor of Havana harbor around
the wreck of the MAINE. After its completion
in November, 1911, the water was pumped out from around the wreck inside
the cofferdam. This left the wreck in the open air, where it was
more easily and thoroughly examined by the new investigators, for the first
time since it had sunk. A second board of inquiry, lead by
Rear Admiral Charles E. Vreeland met on November 10. Their investigation
was finished in several weeks and the report was sent to President
Taft on December 14, 1911. The remains of the crewmen had been removed
from the ship and taken back to the United States on board the armored
cruiser NORTH CAROLINA for burial at Arlington National Cemetery.
The wreck of the ship was then refloated, towed out to sea, and ceremonially
scuttled on March 16, 1912.

When the Vreeland Board began their investigation in 1911, they were
able to take a much better look at the wreck of MAINE.
They reached essentially the same conclusion as the Sampson board, differing
only in detail They agreed that the magazine explosion
had been triggered by an external blast, but that that the original charge
was a low form of explosive, and that the original blast did not occur
at frame eighteen as decided by the Sampson court. Instead, they
placed the explosion further aft, between frames twenty-eight and thirty-three,
where about 100 square feet of plating was dented in as much as two feet
and torn irregularly, with the torn edges bent inward into the ship.
According to the Vreeland Board, a large high explosive charge would
have punched a clean hole in the side of the ship, rather than the large
dent and ragged tear which they found. They decided that the bending
of the keel into the "inverted V" shape had been caused by the explosion
of the magazines.

Thus, the conclusion that the explosion which destroyed the ship
was triggered by an external blast, as reached by both the Sampson and
Vreeland inquiries, seems to be a valid one. Having reached that
same conclusion, we still don't know what actually caused the blast.
Was the MAINE destroyed by a Spanish mine, as so
many believed in 1898, by sabotage, or by some kind of "infernal
machine" ?

Bibliography
at end of Part TwoSupport this Site
by Visiting the Website Store! (help us defray
costs!)
We are providing the following service for
our readers. If you are interested in books, videos, CD's etc. related
to the Spanish American War, simply type in "Spanish American War" as the
keyword and click on "go" to get a list of titles available through Amazon.com.